"Val" wrote:
"John Bachman" wrote:

If it is a drainage situation, you are not necessarily stuck with it.
It could be replaced by a culvert and covered over level with the
surrounding land, solving your problem and not creating a new one.

A culvert *could* cause more problems
than you solve. There's usually more to it than tossing a pipe in a ditch
and covering it up. Depending on how much water flows through that ditch and
where it comes from.

A culvert large enough to handle the volume of water that is likely to
occur in a ditch the size described would probably be cost
prohibitive. From discussing that same possiblility with my own
project I know that an undertaking of that magnetude would cost in
excess of $100,000. And still there is no guarantee there won't be
wash outs necessitating expensive repairs on a regular basis. A pipe
that diameter for that distance is not a culvert anymore, now you're
talking aqueduct.

The OP needs to observe for a year or two and ask the locals about
that ditch before making any decisions... often such a large ditch is
very seasonal, can be bone dry most of the time, part of the time with
normal rains there will be no more than a trickle, but then all of a
sudden something lets loose and it can fill with a torrent to
overflowing... may not be a spring thaw, could be from many miles away
when beaver do some reengineering.

"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in message
...

My son screwed up the chance to make about a grand doing some painting for a
neighbor, though. The guy asked if he had any experience. My son said "My dad
will teach me". I told him he could get some hands-on experience, since his
bedroom needed to be repainted. He thought he could just jump right in and
paint. But, after removing door hardware and electrical plates, and doing all
the taping, he began to get discouraged. He got the walls painted, and then I
told him he had to reverse the taping and do the molding. Suddenly, he became
distracted by something insurmountable:

Seem to me like an awful hard way to do the job. Taping twice? I rarely do it
once. But then I know how to use a brish.

Bob

"NickGrey" wrote in message
ps.com...
I've recently moved into a house with a largish garden and am looking
to landscape a 2 acre paddock alongside.

The paddock has 1 large trench down it, around 4ft deep and 12ft wide
running about 100 yds. It make mowing and groundcare a nightmare as my
tractor feels like its going to tip if I drive along it and misses
bits if I drive across it. The rest of the field also has shallower
channels/undulations of around 1ft deep by 10ft wide, which cause
problems.

Maybe the undulations were man-made to increase the surface area, but
in any case I would like to level it out but don't know where to
start.

I've got an old JCB digger and a tractor and trailer, but I would
imagine I would need literally hundreds of tons of topsoil to level
it.

I considered getting a power harrow for the undulations, would this
work? I can't see much choice but to get topsoil for the large trench
or make it into a pond, but am not keen on a pond there.


Level is where, comparing any two points, any surface point is equidistant
from the center of the earth.
Two ways. Move the high soil to the low soil until that condition is met.
Add soil to the low soil until that condition is met. Or, the combination
of the two.

--
Dave
Profound is we're here due to a chance arrangement
of chemicals in the ocean billions of years ago.
More profound is we made it to the top of the food
chain per our reasoning abilities.
Most profound is the denial of why we may
be on the way out.

"Bob F" wrote in message
...

"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in message
...

My son screwed up the chance to make about a grand doing some painting
for a neighbor, though. The guy asked if he had any experience. My son
said "My dad will teach me". I told him he could get some hands-on
experience, since his bedroom needed to be repainted. He thought he could
just jump right in and paint. But, after removing door hardware and
electrical plates, and doing all the taping, he began to get discouraged.
He got the walls painted, and then I told him he had to reverse the
taping and do the molding. Suddenly, he became distracted by something
insurmountable:

Seem to me like an awful hard way to do the job. Taping twice? I rarely do
it once. But then I know how to use a brish.

Bob



I wanted him to experience the worst possible scenario.